Follow these tips to use guest posting for building your brand’s online profile
Are you a startup looking to boost your online visibility and drive more traffic to your website? Guest posting is a powerful strategy that can help you achieve these goals. You can improve your search engine rankings and establish your brand as an industry by creating high-quality backlinks through guest posting. This article guides you through effective guest posting strategies specifically tailored for startups. We will provide actionable tips on finding the right guest posting opportunities, creating compelling content that resonates with your target audience, and building relationships with influential bloggers and website owners.
What is a guest post and why use it?
Guest posting is writing content for a person’s blog to build relationships, exposure, authority, and links. It is a great way to establish a relationship with the blogger who hosts your post. A guest post can help you gain a bigger audience for additional exposure, and establish authority within your audience and theirs. Ultimately, bloggers are interested in publishing high-quality content that can attract new readers and retain their current ones. This makes guest posting a win-win situation for website owners and bloggers because they want to rank higher in search engines and attract more readers.
While there have been speculations about the longevity of this inbound marketing strategy, guest posting is still one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site and grow your audience. Through guest posting, you might even increase your social media influence indirectly. Think of guest posting as a way to pitch to an established community. If you add value to this community’s reading experience, they will visit your blog to check out your other content.
An important thing to remember is that when you post on another person’s site, you need to include a link to your blog. Whether it is embedded in the text or included in the author bio, generating these links is the main goal of guest blogging.
Creating a guest post strategy for startups
The first thing you need to do is find a blog that will host you. The best way to do that is by running a Google search – type in common topics in your industry and see what turns up. Create high-quality work when you are looking for blogs to post to. If you already have social proof as a credible authority in the industry, other blogs will be excited to partner with you and share your content.
Once you have found the blogs you want to write for, start sending email pitches to each one. You need to be familiar with the site that you are pitching to. Take time to understand their writing style, target audience, and the topics they cover. You will have a greater chance of success if the blogger has some idea of who you are.
When writing the blog post, choose a topic you understand well. That does not necessarily mean you must be an expert. However, you need some prior knowledge of it at the very least.
Some other ways that you can effectively implement guest posting to get the proper benefits include:
- Trying guest posting services
- Targeting websites with a high domain authority
- Creating high-quality content
- Considering blogs that publish your competitor’s guest posts
- Tracking your results
- Spending some time in the comment section
Trying guest posting services
As a startup, there are many things that you need to think about and guest posting may not be the biggest priority at the time. That is why guest posting services were created. They handle finding relevant blogs, submitting proposals, or creating content for you so you can focus on other things. All you have to do is pay and ensure that everything is going smoothly. Find a reliable service because poor-quality links can negatively impact your website because of the penalties that search engines may impose.
Targeting websites with a high domain authority
It is more effective to guest-blog websites with a high domain authority because they already have followers who read their blogs. They already have an established brand in their niche. If you post content that links to your site, the readers from that blog will most likely be able to discover your site.
Creating high-quality content
Quality content is the foundation of successful guest posting. Most websites have pretty high standards for the content they post on their blogs. They already have quite a good reputation and they want to maintain it. When writing, think of something exciting and unique that offers long-term benefits. Remember that redundant topics have a very high chance of getting rejected.
Consider websites that have published your competitor’s guest posts
Research your competitors’ guest-posting strategies, and where they post their content. You have a high chance of getting your content published because they have already accepted content from your competitors.
Track your results
Your guest post going live is just the start. Gather data after the posting and track the results after your content is published. Figure out how much and what kind of traffic was brought to your site. You should also keep track of social shares and conversations. This information can help you determine what websites you can work with again.
Spend some time in the comments section
Rather than moving on to your next target website and forgetting about the content you’ve already published, revisit previous guest posts often to see if any readers made comments or asked questions. Take time to respond to the comments. With time, this will add to your authority as the author. You can also establish yourself as the go-to person for readers to gain more insight.
Guest posting costs and ROI
ROI (Return on Investment) is one of the most common metrics in evaluating startup success. Guest posting as a technique can be hard to quantify, but there are five ways that you can get value from guest posts. You must balance the benefits you get with the investment to ensure a good ROI.
- Initial Investment
- Potential Returns
Initial Investment
While this depends on the guest post, the initial investment may not be very high. The important thing that you do need to invest in is the time to find guest post opportunities. The time investment will vary from post to post because sometimes you do your research. People might send you offers in your email, or you might meet someone at a conference who offers you a chance to write for them. An important thing to remember is that the more you write for one site, the further you can stretch the investment.
You also need to understand the initial monetary investment. When you begin, you might be paying for guest blogging tools, access to lists of sites that accept guest posts, etc. You might also be paying a writer to write your guest posts for you and in that case, you will have a defined monetary cost per guest post that doesn’t change. These factors can be tricky to compare for your ROI but are worth measuring.
Potential Returns
ROI can be split into five categories:
- Money
- Traffic
- Backlinks
- Awareness/trust
- Relationships.
Money
Money is almost exclusionary from other value sources because you can make money through guest posting. It would be because the host site pays for it or someone else pays you to include their link in your guest post. Hypothetically speaking, if you contribute regularly to a high-authority website, people pay to get their links in your posts. You can therefore bring in a lot of money if you can include it organically and in a valuable way.
However, if you add their links, you will use valuable space on someone else and not promote yourself. The assumption is that the money you receive is your compensation rather than your link or traffic. It is quite easy to measure ROI because you need to compare the cost of the post with the money you get from it.
Traffic
Guest posts don’t result in an immediate traffic boost. This strategy requires a lot of patience. If you are measuring your website traffic the first week after posting, then yes, the traffic will not be the best. For example, if a post only gets you 50 hits a week, that is not good enough. But, if you get 50 hits a week for a couple of years, that is quite a bit of traffic.
Major Categories
Decide if you want your best article on your site or as a guest post. If it does well as a guest post, you get a lot of visibility and secondhand value on a site that is not yours. It is worthwhile if your site didn’t get the chance to rank yet. The ultimate goal of guest blogging is to write for as many sites as possible that are larger than your own but are not your direct competition.
Backlinks
Backlinks are valuable in marketing. Pay attention to sites with a good backlink profile because there are different links from various sources. One thing to note is that many high-quality and high-traffic websites do not accept unsolicited guest posts and will either disallow links or unfollow them. You might get disappointed if backlinks are your primary goal for guest posting. Consider links as a bonus when they happen and focus on the other sources of value for your investment.
Awareness and trust
As an author, it is important to build trust among your readers. That is why when sites contribute to big-name blogs, they put the logos of the blogs on their landing page. It establishes legitimacy and social proof, it is a way to tell your readers that even though your site might be small, you are legitimate.
Relationships
Guest posting allows you to build relationships with editors and site owners. Once you have made a connection and proved that you know what you are talking about, you get firsthand value from that relationship. Guest posting can lead to great opportunities.
Guest posting for backlink building
The first rule of guest posting for backlinks: DO NOT USE GUEST POSTING FOR BACKLINKS.
Successful guest blogging has never been backlink-focused. Since the whole point is to build authority and grow readership, any backlinks you receive are incidental. If you approach guest blogging with backlinks as your main goal, there is a possibility that you might target low-quality sites or compromise on content quality.
Make sure that you have a viable brand. Your sites, design, authority signals, content, domain, and focus will determine if your guest posts get accepted. Most high-quality blogs and editors will not want to link to sites with low-quality content, no matter how great the guest post is. Your brand should include:
- Clean, modern design and logo
- Social signals for X, Pinterest, Linkedin, Facebook
- Trust signals such as mentions in authority publications, testimonials, etc.
- Relevant, high-quality content
- About us, contact, legal pages, etc.
To continue posting in top publications, have at least one high-quality guest post published on a reputed site. You need to give editors an example of your writing style and quality. If you have not guest-posted before, you should write a great post and get it published on a known site in your niche.
Guest Blogging Campaign
Create a list of guest posting targets. There are multiple ways that you can find these opportunities. These include:
- Google search method
- Influencer method
- Competitor backlinks method
- Buzzsumo method.
After implementing those methods, you will have quite a list of dozens of guest blogging targets. You will have a good mix between high-authority sites and low-grade blogs. From the list, you need to figure out:
- Domain-level metrics: Domain Authority/Rating, referring domains, backlinks
- Content quality: Review a few blogs to see what content they normally post. Choose high-quality sites.
- Profile location: Does the site give guest authors a visible profile above the fold or bury the profile at the end of the article?
- Engagement: How many shares does a typical post have? A highly engaged audience is a good sign.
- Content relevance: Does the site post regular content about your niche? And what is the typical engagement level for such topics?
- Guest authors: Check what kind of guest authors the site has hosted before and whether they come from authority sites or spammers.
Email Addresses And Building Relationships
Once you have created your list, start approaching guest post targets by finding their email addresses and building relationships. You can use the services of a PR agency like Pressfarm to find media outlets to email. With a curated media list from our account executive, you can connect with the best journalists in your niche. Our Launch and Campaign packages include engaging guest posts from expert writers.
Beyond creating quality guest posts for you, we can also distribute these to media outlets with high domain authority. With Pressfarm, you can generate the publicity your brand deserves and boost your online visibility with quality content.
From there, you will have to come up with guest post ideas. Build your ideas around what is already known to work on the blog you’re targeting. When you send your target blogs an idea that has worked in the past, they are more likely to give you a guest post spot. It is also important to keep the audience’s expertise level in mind since one of your objectives is to build backlinks. Pick up ideas that align with your site as well.
Pitch your idea to blogs and media outlets and see if they will pick it up. Cold email pitching is one way to go about doing this. Once your idea is approved, you can start creating the content by focusing on readability, including custom images, and getting contextual backlinks.
Guest posting email templates
As mentioned before, cold email pitches are effective in getting your guest post request accepted. Here are some cold-emailing templates to consider:
#1 – Template 1
This email lets the recipient know you aren’t just a random person looking for a guest posting opportunity but are a regular reader of their blog. Build a relationship with them and possibly showcase some of your achievements and guest posts on other popular websites.
Hello, [Name]
I’ve been an avid reader of [Blog Name] for some time now.
I’ve been researching an idea for a blog post about [Blog Post Title]. I thought this could be a great contribution to your audience.
The summary of the post that I’m writing is…
[Bulleted List or Paragraph Summary of Your Post]
I’ve also published several successful guest posts on some big blogs like [Blog Name 1], [Blog Name 2], and [Blog Name 3] – which I have linked below:
THIS LINK #1 LINK #2 LINK #3
What do you think? Should I write it up and send you a draft?
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Thanks & Regards, [Your Name]
#2- Template 2
Keep your emails short and precise because nobody likes to read long emails when they probably get hundreds and thousands daily.
Hello, [name] Greetings.
I know that you probably receive a bulk of emails every day from the readers of your blog [website name]. So, I’ll keep it simple and short…
I see you publish great content about topics like [Topic 1] and [Topic 2]. I am writing a well-researched blog post on [Blog Post Title], which might be a great addition to your blog.
Here are the links to a few of my latest blog posts:
[Link #1] [Link #2]
Do you mind if I send you the draft to publish on your blog?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks and Regards, [Your Name]
#3 – Template 3
Sometimes telling bloggers that you randomly stumbled on their website while researching can work. You can also add a list of topics you are familiar with.
Hey [Name],
I was researching about [Topic] this afternoon and stumbled upon your site [Website Name] – a great collection of high-quality articles.
I am reaching out to contribute a high-quality post to your blog. Below are the topics, on which I can write a well-researched post:
[Topic 1] [Topic 2] [Topic 3]
Looking forward to hearing from you about one of the topics above, and sending you the drafts as soon as possible.
Regards, [Your Name]
As you can see, while it may seem complicated, guest posting is quite straightforward. With the tips above, you can build a guest posting strategy that grows your audience and builds authority for your brand.
